Fungi on wild seeds and fruits

This paper reviews and determines the fungi growing on seeds and fruits of wild plants in various habitats. Such fungi colonise a wide range of substrates with most reported from cones, cupules, and leguminous pods that are high in cellulose and lignin content. There are 1348 fungal species (belonging to 230 families and 609 genera) reported from wild seeds and fruits in 84 countries, listed in this paper. Of these, 300 fungi were described from wild seeds and fruit substrates. Members of the Fabaceae support the highest number of taxa, namely 19% of the novel wild fruit fungi. Twenty-eight genera, including 5 fossil fungal genera have been described from wild seeds and fruits: Agarwalomyces, Amorocoelophoma, Anisogenispora, Archephoma, Centrolepidosporium, Cylindroaseptospora, Cylindromyces, Davidhawksworthia, Delonicicola, Discotubeufia, Glaxoa, Kionocephala, Leucaenicola, Naranus, Neolindgomyces, Pleohelicoon, Quercicola, Remotididymella, Repetoblastiella, Restilago, Soloacrosporiella, Strobiloscypha and Tainosphaeria. Archephoma, Meniscoideisporites, Palaeodiplodites, Palaeopericonia and Xylohyphites are the new fossil fungal genera. Fungal asexual morphs predominate on wild seeds and fruits rather than the sexual morphs. The dominant fungal genera on wild seeds and fruits include Alternaria, Aspergillus, Candida, Chaetomium, Cladosporium, Colletotrichum, Curvularia, Diaporthe, Drechslera, Fusarium, Mucor, Penicillium, Pestalotiopsis, Restiosporium, Rhizopus, Talaromyces, Trichoderma and Xylaria. Certain assemblages of fungi have specific and distinct relationships with their hosts, especially Xylaria species (e.g., Xylaria magnoliae on Magnolia fruits; X. xanthinovelutina (= X. ianthino-velutina) on Fabaceae pods; X. carpophila on Fagus cupules; X. persicaria on liquidambar fruits). Whether these species occur as endophytes and become saprobes following fruit fall requires further investigation. In this study, we also made several sexual morph collections of sordariomycetous taxa from different seed and fruit substrates mainly from Thailand, with a few from the UK. These include 15 new species, 13 new host records and 1 new geographical record. The new species are described and illustrated.